


Home

by TriptocaineAndThirium



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Heavy Rain
Genre: Alternate Universe - Kara stays in Detroit instead of going to Canada, Ethan and Kara basically adopt each other as siblings, Gen, Human Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human), that’s it, that’s the whole fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-05 15:02:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20490800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriptocaineAndThirium/pseuds/TriptocaineAndThirium
Summary: In which Kara finds a different home for herself and Alice, and makes her family a little larger along the way.





	1. Home

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise, I’m not dead! Writing gets a lot harder when you take marching band, makes you live for weekends because it means no practice and more sleep lol
> 
> Anyway, this one is a short little thing I wrote on a spontaneous feels trip and then completely forgot about till I started looking through my old writing and found it. Cleaned it up a little and decided to post it. Could have been written better I suppose but I figured I needed to post something so everybody would know I was alive haha.
> 
> Setup for this AU: Heavy Rain took place the month before DBH, Ethan and Shaun moved to Detroit to get away from the memories of what happened. After Kara escaped Zlatko, she decided not to trust Luther and went on her own with Alice (she meets back up with Luther in Jericho when it gets attacked though, it’s fine.)

_ November 6, 2038 _

_ 10:45 PM _

_ Mars Residence _

A series of desperate-sounding knocks on Ethan’s door forced the man to reluctantly awaken from his sleep, groaning as he did so.  _ Who could be visiting at this hour? It’s late. _ Normally Ethan would be awake watching TV, but he’d been hard at work, having found another architectural firm to work at, and he was exhausted. Turning over on his side, he got out of bed and put on a shirt and pants since he’d slept in only his boxers as usual. Shaking his head to clear the last vestiges of tiredness from his mind as he pulled on a jacket and shoes, he went to the front door and opened it only a fraction. A woman stood there, with a child clinging to her arm. The woman paused mid-knock when she saw Ethan opening the door, and a desperate look appeared in her eyes.

“Please,” she pleaded, “Can you help us? We don’t have anywhere else to go, and Alice can’t stay out here for too long or she’ll get sick.”

Ethan shook his head a little; he felt bad for denying the woman’s request, but he didn’t think it would be safe to allow a pair of strangers into his home while Shaun was around. He didn’t know where these two came from, after all. “I’m really sorry, but I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to take any risks. There might be other people around that can help you, but I don’t think I can.” He was about to close the door, but the woman grabbed it before he could.

“T-then just take Alice,” she stammered. “She needs shelter more than I do, I can find somewhere else to go.” She tried to push the little girl in front of her, closer to the door, but the girl objected to this and ran back to her as she turned to leave.

“Kara, wait!” Tearfully, Alice began to tug on the woman - Kara’s - arm, trying to prevent her from leaving. “You promised you’d be with me forever, it hasn’t been forever yet!” The girl turned to Ethan, tears in her eyes. “Please, you can’t separate us, please!”

Seeing how close the two obviously were and hearing Alice speak of a promise Kara made to her made Ethan remember that night at the warehouse, when he promised to never leave Shaun again. He imagined himself at the other end of this situation; something had obviously happened, if he and Shaun were in their places his son would no doubt object to being separated just as Alice had. He couldn’t turn them away now, despite still not knowing them he saw that they meant a lot to one another. He opened the door a little more, allowing some cold air into the house. “Come on,” he said, locking eyes with Kara when she faced him in surprise. “I can’t promise you that I can help much, but you can stay here for the night at least. You need to be out of the cold.”

Kara smiled warmly as she led Alice into the house. “Thank you.” Once inside, she removed her coat and helped Alice with hers. Shaun peeked from the stairs, having heard at least some of the noise from outside. Alice noticed him and shyly waved, which Shaun returned before disappearing back upstairs to his room. Ethan closed the door and slid off his own coat, then looked at Kara, a questioning look on his face. He began walking to the kitchen, gesturing for Kara to follow him. Alice seemed content with sitting down on the couch and observing her new surroundings.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Ethan asked as gently as possible as they sat at the table. “I just want to know why you need help, that’s all. I won’t kick you out for being honest.”

Kara swallowed nervously.  _ I don’t know what his opinions on androids are yet. Intuition says I trust him, experience says I don’t. Well...I guess taking chances are a part of being human, so here goes. _ Not trusting her voice yet, she simply allowed the synthetic skin to recede from her hand, showing the white plastimetal frame common to androids. She stared at it for a moment before looking at Ethan, who was looking at her hand as well.

“You’re an android?” To Kara’s relief, his tone didn’t hold any outright malice in it. Still, after the run-in with Zlatko where she was almost reset thanks to her trusting him, she was reluctant to place her full trust in anyone besides Alice, not even the android Luther that saved them.

“Yes, but Alice is human,” she explained. “That was why I didn’t want her in the cold too long. I can’t get sick like she can.”

“But wouldn’t your…” Ethan paused for a moment, searching for the right term. He didn’t know very much about androids, only of their existence from how commonplace they were. “Wouldn’t your biocomponents freeze over if you were in the cold for longer periods of time?”

“Possibly,” Kara admitted. “But if that happened, I would make sure Alice was somewhere safe first.”  _ His concern for Alice and I is as endearing as it is genuine. Maybe he doesn’t hate androids after all... _

“How did you end up with her, anyway? What happened?” Kara felt the urge to lie to Ethan, to say what they went through was none of his business. But he’d taken them into his home and even said he wouldn’t kick them out for honesty, so from here it was all or nothing.

“I’m an AX400 model android, which is a model designed for housework and domestic things like taking care of children. I was owned by a man named Todd Williams, Alice’s father...I think I was with others before that, but I don’t remember them very well. Anyway, Todd bought me because his wife had recently left him, taking the eldest daughter with her, and he lost his job…” She stopped when she noticed Ethan was looking down with a saddened look on his face, as if what she’d said thus far hit a bit close to home. “Are you alright?” she asked with concern.

Ethan looked up at her, as if startled by the fact she’d noticed his sad expression. “Hm? Oh, yeah, sorry. I’m fine. I just...well, my wife left me as well. So I kind of know how that feels…”

Kara felt a pang of guilt for making him remember his own losses. “I’m sorry, should I stop?”

“No, no, I’m okay. Just stung a bit to think about, that’s all,” Ethan dismissed with a slight wave of his hand. “Why did Alice’s father lose his job?”

“A combination of things. He hated androids - blamed them for the loss of his job - and had a drug habit; do you know what Red Ice is?” A shake of the head. “I don’t either, not beyond its chemical composition. I think taking it heightened his aggression, which was already bad because of all the losses he’d endured. The wife left because she was afraid of Todd, but she didn’t think of taking Alice with her. I’m not sure if the drug habit or android hatred came first, but the mixture was terrifying when he got into one of his moods. Alice told me that Todd used to break me on several occasions, not that I would remember since he would take me in for repairs and CyberLife protocol is for them to reset my memory. In fact, just two days ago I’d come back to the house after getting reset again…” Kara stopped again, feeling a lump in her throat as she recalled the first moments of her deviancy. What she’d done after deviating.

_ STRESS LEVEL: 68% _

Now it was Ethan’s turn to be concerned. “Kara? What’s wrong?”

Kara blinked, trying to clear away her tears to no avail. She stood abruptly and faced away from Ethan, shaking with remorse. “I-I, I did something,” she stammered, shame clouding her thoughts and turning them into a muddled mess. “I-I, w-when we left Todd’s house, w-when I deviated, I-I killed him! I didn’t want to b-but he hurt Alice and I just couldn’t take it anymore a-and we fought and I-I shot him!” Before, she’d felt little for the man, when he’d hurt Alice and hurt her so many times before, but now in the presence of another human father - if the little boy at the stairs earlier was any indication - she felt the real, crushing weight of what she’d done. She had only done it to protect Alice, but it still affected her to know that her first action upon breaking her programming had been to fight and kill a human.

“Kara,” came the gentle response, not what she’d been expecting. “I know how you feel.”

She laughed, not a humorous sound by any means, a broken, disbelieving wail of a laugh. “How could you know how I feel? You’re not an android.” It came out unnecessarily bitter, more than it needed to be, and she regretted it the instant the words left her mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“I had to kill another human before too, to protect my son. I didn’t really have a choice and I doubt you did either. You were protecting Alice, weren’t you?” Kara nodded, finally turning around. Ethan came closer, hesitant as though waiting for Kara to say something else. When she did not, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. Kara was at a loss for words; she’d never been hugged by anyone except Alice. Slowly, though, she adjusted and wrapped her arms around Ethan as well, as best she could given he was taller than her.

Alice, who had been quietly watching the entire exchange from the couch, broke the silence after a few minutes. “You kinda look like siblings.”

Kara and Ethan separated, both looking at Alice. “We do?” they said at the same time.

Alice nodded. “Uh-huh. Look, your eyes are kinda the same color, and your hair is too.” Ethan laughed, and Kara felt compelled to as well, welcoming the distraction from the earlier conversation. “What? It’s true!” the girl defended, clutching the fox toy Kara found for her earlier in her arms.

Kara admittedly was a bit awestruck by the sudden domesticity of the conversation, and of the house itself. Absentmindedly, she wondered what would have happened if Ethan had owned her, and not Todd. She brushed those thoughts aside, however; if one good thing had come out of being owned by Todd, it was Alice. She wouldn’t trade her for the world.

“Where is Alice going to sleep?” she asked Ethan, suddenly aware of how late it was.

Ethan’s brow arched in confusion. “Aren’t you going to sleep too?”

Kara shrugged. “Androids don’t really sleep.”

Ethan gave her a look that read,  _ You are obviously tired, whether you’re an android or not, _ but otherwise let her comment slide. “Alice can sleep here on the couch, I’ll get another pillow and a few blankets from upstairs. Do you or Alice have any other clothes?” Kara shook her head no, as did Alice. “I’ll go to the store tomorrow and see if I can find anything - that’ll give you an opportunity to meet my son Shaun. Don’t worry, he’s a really nice kid, I bet he and Alice would get along great.”

Alice looked very happy to hear this. “So I’ll finally have another kid for a friend?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

“You’ve never had a friend your age?” Ethan looked to Kara for an explanation, and she simply mouthed ‘Todd’ to him. A hard look came into his eyes, and Kara knew he was most likely wondering how far Todd’s abuse of either Alice or Kara had gone. She couldn’t help but feel a bit happy that he cared so much about what happened to them already despite knowing them for less than an hour, and she could tell the concern wasn’t mostly about Alice based on the fact he’d comforted her about Todd’s death.

Later in the night, as she tucked Alice in and went into stasis, she supposed after all that there were humans in the world that really did care about the plight androids faced. Humans that understood that androids had the capability to care for others just as humans did, to have families like they did.

Maybe this was where she and Alice were meant to be...

\----------------------------------------------

_ November 12, 2038 _

_ 12:48 AM _

_ Canada Border Services Agency _

Kara’s heart beat wildly in her chest. This was it, this was the moment she’d been striving for. The mother and daughter had finally made it to the Canadian border, reuniting with Luther along the way. They were just about to cross the border to a place with no android laws, which meant Kara and Luther could be safe from persecution, safe to raise Alice. But she couldn’t help feeling like something was missing.

“Luther, watch Alice for a second. I need to...think about this.”

“What’s there to think about, Kara? You’ve been thinking about this the whole time, haven’t you? We’re almost free.”

“Luther. Please.” Kara’s tone left little room for argument, so Luther relented and allowed her to leave the line for a moment. She went over to the restroom, passing Rose on the way. Rose immediately looked worried and followed her inside.

“Kara, what’s wrong? You looked like you were in a hurry.”

“I...I don’t think Canada is the right option anymore, Rose.”

“What? But you’ve worked so hard to get to this point, why change your mind now?” Rose leaned against the wall, while Kara rested her hands on the counter, looking at herself in the mirror. She remembered what Alice had said before, about her and Ethan looking like siblings. Now it felt more true than ever. And it only made the fact she was preparing to depart for Canada that much more isolating. It was ironic, in a way; Rose had told her she was going to Canada to live with her brother in Ontario until things settled down. And Kara would be leaving her brother behind, if he even knew she had escaped Jericho.

Her sight blurred, and she looked down into the porcelain white of the sink only to find tears falling into it. She leaned more against the counter and began sobbing, shutting her eyes and suddenly wishing she’d just stayed in Detroit, stayed with Ethan and Shaun. In the six days she’d known them, they offered more of a home to her and Alice than Canada ever would.

_ Canada might offer freedom by laws, but nothing is more freeing than finding a family. That’s what they are to me _ , Kara thought.  _ That’s where I belong. _

Wiping her tears, she looked to Rose again. “We need to get out of here and get back to Detroit. Can you help us?”

“I can try, but it might look suspicious if we all left in one big group so soon after getting here.”

Kara was silent for a moment, pondering her next move. She remembered seeing the Jerry android she’d saved on the street earlier, in the line next to her. Deciding to take a gamble and hope he hadn’t passed through yet or worse, gotten found out and killed, she established a connection to him.  _ Jerry? Can you hear me? _

_ Kara? I’m still in line, is there something you need? _ Kara let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

_ This is going to sound really crazy, but I need to go back to Detroit. Canada isn’t where I want to be anymore. I have people there that I can’t leave behind. Can you create a distraction so we can leave without getting spotted? _

_ Of course. I owe my life to you, Kara. It’d only be fair if I helped you. _

_ Thank you, Jerry. I won’t forget this. _ With that, Kara cut the connection. “Jerry - a friend of mine - is going to create a diversion so we can leave,” she explained to Rose. “How long will it take us to get back to Detroit?”   
  


“Two, maybe three hours at the most. Are you sure this is a good idea? You could be risking your one shot at freedom.”   
  


“If there’s one thing my family does, it’s taking risks.” Kara felt as though a weight had been lifted from her chest the moment those words were spoken.  _ My family. _

As Kara and Rose exited the restroom, she saw that Jerry had kept his word and started causing a distraction. Many in the other lines had backed away or formed a crowd around Jerry, while most of the soldiers left their posts to see what was going on. The group used the bustle of the crowd to their advantage, and were able to slip out of the building unnoticed. Rose led them to her car, and to Kara’s surprise, handed her the keys. “What? Rose, this is your car. I can’t drive it…”

Rose smiled kindly. “I was planning on getting another one anyway. It’s yours now, you need it more. Go be with the rest of your family.”

Kara smiled in return, tears pricking her eyes again. “Thank you, Rose...for everything.”

Adam walked up to Kara, a deeply apologetic look in his eyes. “I’m sorry for what I said about androids before. You really are alive...I hope you get back to Detroit safely. You deserve freedom, wherever you find it.”

“I forgive you, Adam. Misunderstandings happen all the time; that’s part of what makes us human.”

As Rose and Adam ventured back inside, Kara, Luther and Alice got into Rose’s car. Kara placed the keys into the ignition and began the long drive back to Detroit. Before long, Alice was fast asleep in the backseat. Kara eyed her in the rearview mirror, smiling as she recalled a similar memory just days prior with Alice and Shaun both sleeping. The two got along well, just as Ethan predicted, and Kara thought that maybe the two of them saw each other as family far earlier than she realized that she regarded Ethan as her brother.  _ Leave it to a child to upend my entire worldview once again, _ Kara thought fondly to herself.

After what felt like endless stretches of road and snow, Kara turned onto a familiar street, and stopped in front of a familiar house. It was nearly three in the morning now, and part of her felt a bit guilty for disrupting Ethan’s sleep once again; it reminded her of when they first met six days earlier. As it turned out, she didn’t have to worry about waking Ethan, as when she pulled up in front of the house, Shaun had been watching through the living room window. Immediately after the group got out of the car, he ran off, likely to go get his father. Luther was nervous, understandably, but Kara reassured him there was nothing to worry about. Alice, though shivering from the cold, was excited to reunite with her first friend. 

At last, the door opened, revealing Ethan and Shaun. Shaun ran out to hug Alice and Kara in turn, and when he noticed Luther he curiously came up to him, causing the android to lean down to his height as he introduced himself. Ethan, meanwhile, stood frozen in shock in the doorway.

Kara smiled brightly. “Aren’t you going to invite us in, brother?” Ethan seemed to snap out of his trance at the last word, and stared at her for a moment longer before running outside and hugging her tightly.

“Kara!” he sobbed into her shoulder as he held her. “Shaun and I were so worried - we’d gotten separated in Jericho - we saw the news reports - we didn’t know if you made it - where were you?” His words came in short bursts between sobs of relief.

“It’s okay,” she soothed, hugging him back. “We made it to Canada after the attack...but when we were in line at the border office, I realized that you and Shaun gave us more of a home than Canada ever could provide. Our home is with you...you’re just as much family to me as Alice and Luther are.” Ethan sobbed more, holding her even tighter, and Kara’s smile grew wider when she thought she caught the word “sister” amongst his cries.

For the first time, Kara felt as if she were finally, truly where she belonged. It might not have been where she thought she would be, there might be difficulties to come in the future, but she was sure she would be able to take everything in stride with the family she’d found beside her.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ethan and Kara are siblings now, fight me David Cage I dare you.


	2. UPDATE (not a chapter)

So after doing some thinking, I’ve decided that I might change this from a oneshot to a collection of drabbles/short stories/what have you set on various points within this alternate universe, all after the first chapter. Updates will be _very _sporadic, as marching band rehearsal four days a week combined with all-day competitions every Saturday till November doesn’t give me a whole lot of free time to write.

Leave requests in the comments here, or you can send them in an ask on my Tumblr (detroitheavysouls). I’ll even take writing prompts or simple words as requests.


End file.
